-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The first nine months of this year has seen more pirate attacks than all of last year . And more than half of those attacks were carried out by suspected Somali pirates , an international maritime watchdog group said Wednesday .

The increase in attacks has forced many countries to patrol pirate hotspots such as the Gulf of Aden .

`` The increased activity in Somalia is the major reason for the spike , '' said Cyrus Mody , manager of the International Maritime Bureau , which monitors shipping crimes .

From January 1 until September 30 , pirates worldwide mounted 306 attacks , compared with 293 in all of 2008 , the Bureau said .

Of the incidents this year , Somali pirates accounted for 54 percent : they launched 168 attacks .

Most of them took place off the east coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden , a major shipping route between Yemen and Somalia .

They successfully hijacked 32 vessels and took 533 hostages . Eight others were wounded , four more killed and one is missing , the Bureau said .

Somali pirates are still holding four ships for ransom with 80 crew members as hostages .

Somalia 's transitional government , which has a tenuous grip on power , has been unable to stop the pirates -- many of whom are based in the port cities .

This has prompted Europe and other Western countries to step up maritime patrols .

`` In the Gulf of Aden , the number of attacks have gone up . But because of the presence of naval vessels , the success rate of the pirates have decreased , '' Mody said . `` The navies are responding very very effectively . ''

Today 's pirates are a far cry from the eye-patched , peg-legged swashbucklers of Hollywood . They don night-vision goggles , carry rocket launchers and navigate with global positioning devices .

Many pirates are trained fighters ; others are young thugs enlisted for the job . Experts say they often sail out to sea in a mother ship and wait for a target .

When they find one , the pirates board smaller boats and move in , typically with five to seven armed hijackers per boat .

Two recent trends have led to a rise in piracy : access and opportunity .

As global commerce picks up , more and more of the world 's fuels , minerals and other crucial commodities travel by ship . Ninety-five percent of America 's foreign trade , for instance , moves by water , according to the U.S. Maritime Administration .

That cargo is an easy target for robbers in countries that lack the resources to secure their shorelines , such as Somalia .

Those who have tracked pirate activity say it started in Somalia in the 1980s , when the pirates claimed they were aiming to stop the rampant illegal fishing and dumping that continues to this day off the Somali coast .

Piracy accelerated after the fall of the Somali government in the early 1990s and began to flourish after shipping companies started paying ransoms .

Those payments started out being in the tens of thousands of dollars and have since climbed into the millions .

With the ransoms they collect , pirates can earn up to $ 40,000 a year , analysts say . That 's a fortune for someone from an impoverished country .

Some analysts say companies are simply making the problem worse by paying the piracies .

`` Yes , the ransoms have probably caused the piracy to become a bit more rampant . But at the same time , from the owner 's point of view , there is no other way currently to secure the safe release of the vessel along with the crew and the cargo , '' Mody said .

`` It 's basically a cycle . ''

Other trouble spots this year were waters off Nigeria , with 20 attacks ; Malaysia with 14 ; and Bangladesh with 12 .

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Somali pirates accounted for 54 percent of all attacks this year

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Most of them took place off east coast of Somalia and in Gulf of Aden

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Somali pirates are still holding four ships for ransom

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Other trouble spots were waters off Nigeria , Malaysia and Bangladesh